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Author’s Note: I recently came across a trove of old letters and stories from decades ago. I like some of them. Hopefully you will too.

I go through fads in my reading. For a while I read almost nothing but detective or spy novels. Techno, noir, crime, or dark comedy, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was the wonderful atmosphere that those books seemed to have. I read entire collections of some authors–Le Carre, Higgins, Deighton, and Greene among others.

When I had tired of that genre it was on to travel, or technology, or some other thing. These days my tastes have run to food writing (no pun intended). The way people write about food is very sensuous. There are hundreds of words cooking (again no pun intended) up imaginary visages of wonderful meals and cozy kitchens. I can sit and read magazines, books, menus, even bottles and boxes to get my minimum daily requirement of atmosphere. Besides, it dovetails nicely with my current obsession with food in general.

Like this:

BOO FRICKIN HOO – “I feel for you victims. It must be terrible to have to take welfare. Now move the hell out of this house so I can foreclose and get the movers in here.”

When Mitt Romney insulted half of America he said he was, “inelegant”. Anyone with an IQ higher than a jelly donut could see Paul Ryan believed the same, but was just too elegant to say it. Yet, lo and behold, it turns out Mr. Ayn Rand is as inelegant as his erstwhile boss. The only difference is he only insulted a third of America.

I fear Ryan may have gone all pinko on us.

The men argue 47% or 30%, depending on the crapweasel you believe is the lesser liar, are takers and not givers. Both men believe people on the public dole choose it as a lifestyle in much the same way the homeless choose to live in filth and piss in doorways. Or as Willard puts it, “…they believe they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing.”

Note:This post is excerpted from a letter, entitled One Saturday Morning, I wrote to friends on February 22, 1999. It was originally posted several years ago, but vanished from the Poobah archives because of the incompetence of my former web host. Welcome back.

Dear Correspondents,

The sky is low and gray and the temperature, at least by California standards, is frigid. Maybe 45 or 50 degrees. I awoke early enough this morning to indulge myself with a little reading and a wonderful breakfast.

BON APPITITE - When you eat anything except rocks and calf's liver the world become one huge grocery store.

Steingarten, whose original job was improbably as a lawyer was appointed food critic of Vogue magazine. (He never explains specifically how he made the jump, but it certainly seems like a move in the right direction if you ask me.) When he was appointed, he found that he had numerous food aversions – not a career-building trait in a food critic. The book is the story of how he learned to eat nearly everything. It seems a redundant tale for someone like me who never saw a food he didn’t like, but it is a good read nonetheless.

For me, the world is a gigantic grocery store. When I go to zoos I don’t think of the beauty of the animal on the hoof, but rather how it might look roasted, on a plate, and surrounded by tender baby carrots and squash. I don’t view those National Geographic travelogues about boys hunting monkey with blowguns so much as adventures as narrated serving suggestions.

I eat anything except rocks and calf’s liver – and I’ve even consumed two wonderful portions of the latter before. I am an omnivore. I’m a highly-developed example of millions of years of successful breeding, producing a specimen who can gain weight in any climate or condition on earth – so long as there is something to eat other than rocks and calf’s liver.

Darwin would be proud I’m sure.

After reading a chapter on surviving on a subsistence diet (which inexplicably included recipes for perfumed rice with lamb and lentils and Swiss chard and bean soup with ricotta toasts), I got hungry and made breakfast. I scrambled up some delicious eggs with bits of Jarlsberg cheese, a touch of cumin, a light dusting of garlic powder, and some chives. As accompaniment I prepared a small bowl of fresh cantaloupe and strawberries, some buttered whole wheat toast, and some aromatic French roast coffee (made with a pinch of salt added before brewing). I savored every bite.

Now I’m floating around on a full belly, quite content, and intensely interested in food. I think I’ll have to spend the rest of the day watching cooking shows on PBS. This, in turn, will lead to an orgy of cooking this afternoon and a full belly tonight. Satisfying, but not healthy. Oh well, better to die with a smile on my face and a full belly, than hungry and pissed because I missed a good meal.